This week we meet Chloe Street, Senior Fashion and Beauty Writer for the Evening Standard. Chloe joined 6 other influencers at our Talent of Tomorrow campaign shoot in April, and sat down with Digital Editor Megan Doyle to discuss her career journey so far, which has taken her from marketing to event production and now to journalism. Chloe shares her advice for young writers who want to break into fashion media, and her thoughts on the future of print and online fashion publications.
Hey Chloe, thank you for joining us on the Talent of Tomorrow campaign shoot today! You’re currently writing about fashion and beauty for the evening Standard but I’m interested to learn how you started in your career and ended up in fashion journalism?
Photo by Jade Berry
I always loved writing, and was editor of my school newspaper but then when I entered the workforce I sidetracked, working for Burberry on their digital team. I made my way back to fashion through producing fashion shows, and then when I moved to Hong Kong and started working for Tatler, I realised that writing was what I loved. It’s definitely been a trial and error process to get where I am today!
So you’ve done everything from digital commerce, marketing, and event production in your career. How do all these diverse experiences help you as a journalist now?
I think it’s helpful to know what questions to ask people, but also it’s great to have experience in lots of different sectors and ways of working — it’s also good to know what other people in the industry are doing. I will forever appreciate the work that goes into producing a fashion show when I’m sat on the front row because I know how much works goes into it!
What do you think about the future of the media industry as digital media becomes increasingly powerful and print media continues to struggle?
I think digital is really exciting and I’m glad that in my current role, I’m working on digital, but I also love print media. I think there’s still a place for print. My theory is, magazines will become more expensive, less will survive but the ones that do will be amazing. They’ll be £10 coffee table pieces which are really stunning, which is a good thing because there’s a lot of them out there!
Online, equally, there’s a lot of noise and we need to get to the place where it’s as professionally proofread and as properly edited as a magazine. It would be great to have slightly less noise but better quality, that’s my only critique of digital. I love seeing the analytics of something I’ve written and actually know how many people are reading it — it’s really satisfying to know whether it’s resonated.
Photos by Claire Younger
“Keep going, keep bashing away at it, be humble, take every opportunity, meet everyone, try and charm everyone, write thank you letters, write follow ups, and get under people’s noses!”
Do you think that a strong social media presence and personal brand is an increasingly important thing for young journalist to have?
I had a previous employer who believed that it wasn’t enough to be able to write, you need to have a following to bring people to your words. I tend to agree, but I think sometimes people get carried away and focus too much on social media.
If you want to be a writer, you need to be able to write. Any one I have ever interviewed for a job has had to be able to write. If they have a strong sense of branding and a strong following to back that up, that’s brilliant. But it’s not the first thing I’d look at!
Photo by Erika Astrid
For a long time, creating your own blog was the best way to get your writing out in the world. Do you think blogs are still an effective way of getting your writing out there as a young writer, considering the blogging-wave has now passed?
I agree, no one really reads blogs like they used to anymore, but practice is practice! Do whatever you can — write for your uni newspaper, your local newspaper or local radio station — more is more! I think it’s important to upload everything you write for everyone else onto a central hub. Even if it’s really small, keep it all in one place as a portfolio.
Lastly, what advice do you have for a young person trying to break into the media and magazine business?
Try and to do everything you can because then you start finding what you like to do. You might think a company is the hallowed halls, then you get there and after two weeks the illusion is shattered by the reality of it. Above everything, keep going, keep bashing away at it, be humble, take every opportunity, meet everyone, try and charm everyone, write thank you letters, write follow ups, and get under people’s noses!
See more stories from our Talent of Tomorrow 2019 campaign below!
